Before I get started with my rant, I just want to clarify that this isn’t an anti-AI post. I use AI to assist with my work, to generate images for my blogs and even use it to help me when I’m unsure about some grammatical detail in English or German. It’s become another tool in my toolbox that I use as needed.
One of my biggest pet peeves of any new technology is the hype that surrounds it. AI is not only not an exception to that, it is arguably the most hyped technology in the computing industry that has ever seen the light of day. There are hundreds of billions of dollars wrapped up in it and its success — and that amount of money does things to the people responsible for it.
To an extent, it seems they’ve lost their humanity. Specifically, I am referring to the constant bragging about AI costing people their jobs. Let’s see some examples:
[Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei] indicated that the government needs to “stop sugar-coating” the threat AI poses to white-collar jobs (via Axios). Perhaps more concerning, Amodei claimed that the technology could take over up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs.
According to Anthropic’s CEO:
“We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming. It’s a very strange set of dynamics, where we’re saying: ‘You should be worried about where the technology we’re building is going.'”
Windows Central
That last sentence shows how utterly detached from reality he is. He claims we should all be worried about where the technology they’re building is going and yet they continue to build it and not worry about its consequences themselves. He says it as though it’s other people’s problem and not his. As long as the investors are happy, he’s happy and doesn’t have a problem. Just how short-sighted that is we’ll talk about below.
Here’s another example:
“Some creative jobs maybe will go away. But maybe they shouldn’t have been there in the first place — you know, if the content that comes out of it is not very high quality,” said OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati in an interview at The Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth University last month (via Fortune).[…]
According to OpenAI’s CTO:
“I’m not an economist, but I certainly anticipate that a lot of jobs will change. Some jobs will be lost, some jobs will be gained.”
Windows Central
There are two things that are so wrong about this. First of all, “maybe they shouldn’t have been there in the first place” is not exactly the most sensitive thing to say to people about to lose jobs they have spent their entire careers cultivating. Secondly, he says that “some jobs will be lost” which is obvious, but he also says that “some jobs will be gained.” He isn’t the only AI executive to make this claim, but as with all of the others, he fails to specify which types of jobs could be created. The statement simply rings hollow.
Bill Gates isn’t much more positive, but at least he strikes a tone that feels less like boasting:
[Bill Gates] predicted that AI would replace humans for most things, but that doesn’t make us powerless. Ultimately, it’s up to us to decide how we use AI and which parts of the work we want to keep doing ourselves, Gates explained.
With that in mind, the philanthropist named three professions he believes are safe from AI takeover. These are coders, biologists and energy experts.
Unilad Tech
If his prediction proves true, it is certainly positive news for coders, biologists and energy experts — that is until people realize those are the safest jobs and there is a storm of people who lost their jobs in other areas trying to get into them.
Gates has also optimistically predicted that AI making people more productive will allow us to have longer vacations and more free time:
“Well, certainly we can look forward to the idea that vacations will be longer at some point,” says Gates, speaking to FOX Business Network on Thursday at the World Economic Forum. Machine learning will make humans more productive and therefore able to accomplish the same amount of work in less time. That’s a good thing, says Gates.
“The purpose of humanity is not just to sit behind a counter and sell things. More free time is not a terrible thing,” says Gates.
CNBC
That would be amazing if that really came to pass, but forgive me if I’m pessimistic about it. We’ve heard this prediction before in the mid-twentieth century about computers in general and it has absolutely not happened. Instead of having to work less, managers now just expect employees to able to get a lot more done in the same amount of time.
My Thoughts
I suspect a lot of people, maybe even the majority, would be happy if they could automate their job with AI, have more free time and still receive their paycheck. I severely doubt that that is what’s going to happen though. History has shown that those who are fortunate enough to keep their jobs will work for companies that are going to expect more from their employees for the same pay in the same amount of time. There won’t be more free time or longer vacations and the existential threat created by the severely shrunken job market will ensure that the employees don’t complain too much about it.
This all sounds rather dystopian and, in a way, it is. Not only for individual people, but also for companies. Executives may be bragging about how they can hire less people by automating more with AI, but they really are shooting themselves in their own feet by doing that. If this happens at a mass scale, as these executives seem to predict that it will, it means people are going to be jobless and therefore won’t be able to afford to buy things. The less buying power the market has, the less these companies will sell and their profits will fall.
AI companies are doing a similar thing by scraping and regurgitating so much online content. If they put online publications out of business, there’s nothing left for them to train their models on. All that will be left is AI-generated content which is a little bit like the snake eating its own tail.
But, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this isn’t an anti-AI rant. I really do like AI and I’ve started it regularly using it to augment my development work among other things. What I dislike, though, is the hype and the insensitive boasting by executives who just seem to be making such bold claims to satisfy investors and continue to rake in the billions. There is so much money at stake right now that they are willing to put aside their humanity and ignore the hypocrisy in their statements.
I suspect I’m not the only one irritated by it. What are your thoughts on the matter? Let me know in the comments!
